Site Mobile Navigation

Eye Black Used to Cut Glare, or Turn Up Spotlight

Giants tight end Jeremy Shockey in eye black. Its use was documented in a 1942 photograph of the Washington Redskins' Andy Farkas. Credit
Nick Laham/Getty Images

UPPER DARBY, Pa., Dec. 1 — As Upper Darby High played its annual Thanksgiving Day football game, a northeaster raked the Philadelphia suburbs, turning the field into a muddy pudding. The last thing any player needed was protection from the sun’s glare. And because the game began in late morning, no one bothered turning on the stadium lights.

Still, the dreariness did not keep many Upper Darby players from spreading eye black on their cheeks. Some dabbed a line of grease under the eyes. Some wore adhesive antiglare patches that resembled Morse code for the face. Others smeared the stuff like shaving cream.

“It’s just the look,” Brandon Murray, an Upper Darby halfback, said after his team had been upset, 20-8, by its archrival, Haverford High. “Most kids think it’s intimidating or it looks good. No one uses it to block out the light.”

That is not necessarily the case in the National Football League. Jerricho Cotchery described a scene in the Jets’ locker room before a game last Sunday, when he and his fellow receiver Laveranues Coles applied eye black as if they were showgirls applying false eyelashes.

They were carrying out a decades-old tradition. A Yale University study found evidence of eye black use dating at least to a 1942 photograph of a Washington Redskins player named Andy Farkas. The eye black origins in baseball are more obscure, the study said.

Coles said that playing without eye-black grease was like “playing with no shoulder pads or no helmet.” Although he grew up in sunny Florida, Coles said he never used eye black until he reached the N.F.L. and struggled with glare.

“I don’t know if it was one of those placebo effects, but it was one of those things that stuck with me,” he said.

But many athletes do not seem to care much about the intended use of eye black. Instead, those smudges and patches and decals have become popular fashion accessories, miniature billboards for personal messages and war-paint slatherings aimed at gaining a psychological advantage more than a visual edge.

“I think it kind of lost its purpose,” said Nick Ciccone, a safety at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. “It’s a fashion thing now. A lot of guys say, if you look good, you feel good, and if you feel good, you play good.”

Reggie Bush, the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner who is now a running back for the New Orleans Saints, inscribed the 619 area code for his hometown in San Diego County on his antiglare stickers while at the University of Southern California. Seizing the moment, Bush had plans to unveil a 619 cologne.

Rutgers running back Ray Rice wears stickers that run cheek to cheek, across his nose. He writes a weekly eulogy to a deceased cousin: RIP 914 SUPE.

Sometimes eye stickers are used for more frivolous purposes. In a game against Arkansas on Nov. 24, running back Keiland Williams of Louisiana State University wore an LSU patch under one eye only, looking like a kind of decal pirate.

Rory Jones, a receiver at South Plaquemines High in Port Sulphur, La., said he had no idea what the eye-black stickers were intended for. “I use them for showboating,” he said.

Tim Heagy, a defensive end at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, said he thought the smeared-cheek look might give him a slight edge over a larger opponent. “If he’s a little bigger, maybe he thinks you’re crazy because you have eye black on,” Heagy said.

Researchers wondered, too. In the past few years, they have begun to examine the accepted truth that eye black does indeed decrease glare reflecting off the skin.

Recent studies have shown that eye black reduces glare somewhat, while improving contrast sensitivity. Yet it remains debatable among experts whether glare is diminished sufficiently to increase a kick returner’s ability to field a ball out of the stadium lights or a shortstop’s ability to pluck a pop fly out of the sun.

Through the years, players have fashioned eye black from burnt cork and shoe polish. Today’s commercially produced eye-black grease is made from such items as beeswax, paraffin and charcoal powder, while antiglare stickers are made of patented fabric with a dull, matte finish.

The Yale study placed 46 students in the sun and tested their reactions using a sensitivity contrast chart. Some participants wore eye-black grease, while others wore adhesive stickers. A third group wore smudges of petroleum jelly as a placebo.

The study found a small, but statistically significant, improvement in contrast sensitivity and glare reduction for participants who wore the eye grease, but not for those who wore antiglare stickers. The results were published in 2003 in Archives of Ophthalmology.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“I thought we would find it to be like war paint and a psychological advantage more than anything else,” Dr. Brian M. DeBroff, the lead author of the Yale study, said in a telephone interview. “We were surprised to find a benefit from the grease.”

Asked if the benefits were significant enough to enhance athletic performance, Dr. DeBroff said, “Certainly in football and baseball, where tracking a ball at high speed is an important aspect, any competitive advantage could be beneficial.”

He added: “Does it translate in terms of being able to pick up the ball if looking back into the sun? Possibly. Certainly, it would be interesting to do further study to determine the exact benefit.”

A study of eye-black grease at the University of New Hampshire also found a small improvement in contrast sensitivity. The findings, published last year in an undergraduate research journal, were considered preliminary, said Dr. Kenneth Fuld, chairman of the university’s psychology department and the study’s sponsor.

Even so, Dr. Fuld, a former New Hampshire assistant baseball coach, said he was skeptical that the grease enhanced a player’s performance.

“I would be highly doubtful that it would have much of an effect, if any,” Dr. Fuld said, noting that tennis players performed at high levels without eye black while constantly dealing with the sun’s glare.

Placing a brand name on adhesive strips in white letters, writing messages on stickers and adorning them with initials and logos appeared to defeat the antiglare purpose of the patches, Dr. Fuld said.

Among the findings of the New Hampshire study were: Eye-black grease did not work as effectively with blue-eyed participants, who have less iris pigment to screen out unwanted light. And women had better results than men, although that might be explained by the smaller sample size of male participants (18) than female participants (28).

While it may seem counterintuitive that all skin tones benefit from eye black, oiliness of the skin and sweating, not simply skin color, affect how much light is reflected into the eyes, said another researcher, Mike Maloney, president of Bjorksten Research Laboratories in Wisconsin.

His company has done testing for Mueller Sports Medicine, a Wisconsin manufacturer of antiglare patches, which were judged ineffective in the Yale study. Brett Mueller, president of the company, said that Yale researchers tested “couch potatoes” rather than attempting to replicate on-field distractions an athlete encounters in his peripheral vision.

The research commissioned by Mueller used a mannequin with a photo diode attached to the right eye. The findings indicated that antiglare stickers reduced the amount of light that entered the periphery of the eye to a greater extent than eye-black grease did.

“But what I can’t tell you is the amount of difference that will make in athletic performance,” Mr. Maloney said.

For elite athletes, the chance that eye black might provide even the slightest advantage can be convincing, said Jeremy Bloom, a kick returner and two-time Olympian who was formerly the world’s top-ranked moguls skier.

“It’s very symbolic of football, whether science proves it works or not,” said Bloom, who is on injured reserve with the Philadelphia Eagles. “If it works just a little, that’s helpful. It can’t hurt.”

On the high school level, though, the ostentatious use of eye black and facial decals has led to a backlash by some coaches. Brian Sipe, a former All-Pro quarterback now coaching Santa Fe Christian School near San Diego, said he limited his players to a thin smudge no wider than the eye.

“It really serves no purpose other than adornment,” Sipe said.

In suburban Philadelphia, Haverford High prevailed over Upper Darby on Thanksgiving without any players wearing eye black. Coach Joe Gallagher had banned its use.

“That’s just frills,” he said. “They were too concerned about how they looked.”

Karen Crouse contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Some Players Use It to Cut Glare, Others to Turn Up the Spotlight. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe